Protestantism

» Migisi - Thomas

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You asked badactor (in the Doctrine thread):
I'd be interested in your evidence for 1st century authorship of Thomas. See the new thread I started on "Gnostic Gospels."
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Evidence? The dating of all the canonized books of the NT is based on scholarly speculation. And so is the Gospel of Thomas. Here's a couple:
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Helmut Koester:
John H. Morison Professor of New Testament Studies and Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History Harvard Divinity School
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/...
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"... Some of these sayings may go back to a very early period of Christianity, some of them may have been added later. The document itself comes from the fourth century.... As with all gospel text, with this one in particular, we have to remember that these texts were fluid, that scribes could add, that scribes could leave out things, that scribes could add comments, or add an interpretation. So we cannot with certainty reconstruct what did the Gospel of Thomas look like around the year 100 or earlier. But it is very likely that it existed at that time, and that a good deal of the material that's now in that manuscript was already in a Greek manuscript that dates back to the first century...." (end quote)
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_t...
(quote) "The early camp argues that since it consists of mostly original material and does not seem to be based on the canonical gospels, it most likely was transcribed from an oral tradition. Since the practice of considering oral tradition as authoritative ended during the 1st century, the Gospel of Thomas therefore had probably been written before then, perhaps as early as around 40. Since this date precedes the dates of the traditional four gospels, there is some claim that the Gospel of Thomas is or has some connection to the hypothetical Q document-a text (or oral verse) that, with Mark, is postulated to have been a source for the gospels of Matthew and Luke....
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"The early camp also notes that Q is almost universally regarded by secular biblical scholars as the most parsimonious explanation for the synoptic problem and is widely regarded to be the earliest written text of Jesus' teachings. It has been hypothesized that Q exists in 3 strata, termed Q1, Q2, and Q3, with the apocalyptic material belonging in Q2 and Q3. Secular biblical scholars have identified 37 sayings that overlap between Thomas and Q, all of which are conjectured to be in either Q1 or Q2 and none of which included the latter, apocalyptic material of Q3. As Thomas does not incorporate material from Q3, it was not aware of Q3 and precedes it. The Q layers of Q1 and Q2 are thought to predate the four gospels. Hence the Gospel of Thomas is thought to be early." (end quote)
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You might want to read the rest of this article. Too much to post.
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Hippolytus and Origen referred to a Gospel of Thomas, but it isn't clear whether they were talking about the 'Infancy' Gospel of Thomas or the 'sayings' Gospel of Thomas. Secular scholars believe the 'Infancy' was written mid-2nd century.
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For estimated dates of early Christian writings, this might be helpful: http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/

-- posted by Migisi